"Better acquainted, indeed!--we'll be intimate!" I ejaculated, affectionately. "I'll introduce you to Dalrymple--you'll like him excessively. Just the fellow to delight you." "So I should say," observed the stranger, drily. "And as for you and myself, we'll--we'll be Damon and ... what's the other one's name?" "Pythias," replied my new acquaintance, leaning back in his chair, and surveying me with a peculiar and very deliberate stare. "Exactly so--Damon and Pythias! A charming arrangement." "Bravo! Famous! And now we'll have another bottle of wine." "Not on my account, I beg," said the gentleman firmly. "My head is not so cool as yours." Cool, indeed, and the room whirling round and round, like a teetotum! "Oh, if you won't, I won't," said I confusedly; "but I--I could--drink my share of another bottle, I assure you, and not--feel the slightest...." "I have no doubt on that point," said my neighbor, gravely; "but our French wines are deceptive, Mr. Arbuthnot, and you might possibly suffer some inconvenience to-morrow. You, as a medical man, should understand the evils of dyspepsia." "Dy--dy--dyspepsia be hanged," I muttered, dreamily. "Tell me, friend--by the by, I forget your name. Friend what?" "Friend Pythias," returned the stranger, drily. "You gave me the name yourself." "Ay, but your real name?" He shrugged his shoulders. "One name is as good as another," said he, lightly. "Let it be Pythias, for the present. But you were about to ask me some question?" "About old Chéron," I said, leaning both elbows on the table, and speaking very confidentially. "Now tell me, have you--have you any notion of what he is like? Do you--know--know anything about him?" "I have heard of him," he replied, intent for the moment on the pattern of his wine-glass. "Clever?" "That is a point upon which I could not venture an opinion. You must ask some more competent judge." "Come, now," said I, shaking my head, and trying to look knowing; "you--you know what I mean, well enough. Is he a grim old fellow? A--a--griffin, you know! Come, is he a gr--r--r--riffin?" My words had by this time acquired a distressing, self-propelling tendency, and linked themselves into compounds of twenty and thirty syllables. My _vis-à-vis_ smiled, bit his lip, then laughed a dry, short laugh. "Really," he said, "I am not in a position to reply to your question; but upon the whole, I should say that Dr. Chéron was not quite a griffin. The species, you see, is extinct." I roared with laughter; vowed I had never heard a better joke in my life; and repeated his last words over and over, like a degraded idiot as I was. All at once a sense of deadly faintness came upon me. I turned hot and cold by turns, and lifting my hand to my head, said, or tried to say:-- "Room's--'bominably--close!" "We had better go," he replied promptly. "The air will do you good. Leave me to settle for our dinners, and you shall make it right with me by-and-by."